It is a short drive - about 15 mins to the Valley of the Giants , and from the carpark a short walk into the shop and elevated walkway . We paid our entry $19 each and proceeded straight onto the walkway - unlike some of the other aerial walkways where you have to walk for a kilometre before you get to it .
It's a gradual climb to each station , although it does flex and swing , even when you aren't moving . It's a bit like the harbour bridge , but upside down .
The walkway gets to 40 m above ground level at it's highest point , and is an easy walk . Trees still tower above you , and they are very big trees !!!
The tree's here are Tingle Trees - Red Tingle trees and also Yellow Tingle trees . The significant difference between the two types is - the red tingle has a large buttress at ground level - up to 20 m around the base , the yellow tingle doesn't have a big buttress , and it is a yellow wood when cut , both are very strong and hard .
The red tingle can only be found in Southwest WA , flowers for the first time at 30 years old , then every 4 years . It's life span is approx 400 years and can grow to 75m high .
They don't have a large tap root and rely on a shallow root system to provide nutrients . The buttress gives the tree support .
Here's one that fell down quite a while ago .
We left and headed toward Peaceful Bay , the drive taking us through forest , then the greenest pastures we've seen for a long long time - very happy looking cattle here !!!
Back onto the highway , then back off it again , as we head in to Peaceful Bay . The water & beaches down on the southern coasts need to be seen to be believed - beautifully coloured clear waters and white beaches , and as every on every other beach in WA - 4WD's - people fishing , swimming and just going for a drive on the beach ( including us )!!!Peaceful Bay is just that - peaceful . It's a small village with a caravan park and a lot of fishing huts / weekenders , but would've been very busy over easter .
Being close to lunch , we continued on to another beach further to the west - Conspicuous Beach and Conspicuous Cliff - probably because they're conspicuous ??? pretty bloody obvious !!
There are 2 sections of limestone cliff poking out of the steep windswept low vegetation . There are 2 lookouts , one is 200m from the carpark , and the other is a whale watching platform at the top of the hill after a series of steps & bitumen walkways . The views are brilliant !!
After lunch we headed toward Nornalup , checking out some of the less travelled roads . There was a 4wd track to Blue Holes , which we decided to take . I locked the hubs and engaged 4wd and away we went down a sandy twisty track . There were hills , rutted tracks , hollows & humps that we went through without a problem , then we found the sand getting deeper - with memories of Francois Peron NP in the back of our minds , we democratically decided to turn and drive back out , rather than maybe getting bogged again !!!
We headed back to Walpole for a closer look to see how big it is . It too has a lot of holiday houses , with a lot of them all shut up and curtains drawn . One thing though , the fishing must be good , we have seen people cleaning fish after being out in their boats - some taking quite some time to clean & fillet all the fish they'd caught !!! The next photo is from the west side of Walpole Inlet , looking back toward town .
The next thing that happened caught us completely off guard , an albino stingray that was about 1.5m across it's wings - complete with whitish eyes !!!
Heading back out , we took another dirt road around to Sandy Beach , with views into Nornalup Inlet .
That's it for today , here's a map link :-https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z1G8gwwxwyYo.ksUVTFe_cxhM&usp=sharing
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